Book description
Mary Ryan, San Francisco pastry chef, is happy to be teaching at her
old alma mater. But she's barely in the door when she realizes that the
teaching staff are at loggerheads with each other. Adding to her dismay,
ex-lover and Homicide Detective O'Connor has enrolled as a student,
claiming to be on disability from the San Francisco Police Department.
In the middle of this turf war, Mary is confronted by dean Robert
Benson. Mary must either force Coolie Martin to leave the school or lose
her job. But why would Coolie's father, a member of the Board of
Directors, allow this to happen? Then when faculty and staff begin
dying, Mary thinks that Coolie's forced exit might only be part of a
larger, more sinister plot. Acting on a hint from O'Connor, Mary enlists
the aid of her former nemesis, Thom Woods. Soon they are knee deep in
murder, money-laundering, blackmail, professional sabotage, and computer
hacking; in other words, business as usual. And it is a rush to uncover
the truth before the bodies start stacking up.... The growing rift
between the “dinosaurs” and the “young brats” on the teaching staff at
San Francisco's École d'Epicure fuels the highly amusing action in
Johnson's superior second cozy to feature funky pastry chef Mary Ryan
(after 2002's Beat Until Stiff). Mary is unpleasantly surprised when
Inspector O'Connor of SFPD homicide shows up as a student claiming he's
on stress leave. Although the cop is her ex-husband's married best
friend, Ryan and the sexy O'Connor have obvious chemistry. Tension among
École's chefs escalates with public insults, a petition to fire one of
the classically trained dinosaurs and a water fight in the school's
prestigious restaurant. When one chef dies after an allergic shellfish
reaction with no shellfish on the menu, and another is strangled at
home, Ryan suspects something more sinister than differences of culinary
theory. In one of many farcical scenes, Ryan enlists the aid of a
hostile friend-of-a-friend to hack into École's computer system to dig
for answers. This enjoyable romp should gain Johnson new fans. Claire
M. Johnson completed the California Culinary Academy's program for
professional chefs in 1983 and worked as a pastry chef in San Francisco
and Oakland for eight years. Set in the restaurant world, Ms. Johnson's
first novel, Beat Until Stiff, won the 1999 Malice Domestic Writer's
Grant. She lives in Lafayette, California, with her husband, two
children, and numerous animals.
